Word: thompson
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...always been speed for Mickey Thompson, 30. who last week went to the annual Bonneville speed trials on the salt flats of Utah with Challenger I, the flashiest hot-rod of them all. To get ready for his run, Thompson quit his job as a pressman for the Los Angeles Times seven months ago, spent up to 20 hours a day -and most of his savings-working with an engineering friend named Fritz Voigt on the long (20 ft.), low (30 in. at the hood) monster...
Early one morning Thompson struggled into an all-black, leather driving outfit, snuggled his face into an oxygen mask, and climbed into a seat that slanted back like a chaise longue. A station wagon pushed Challenger I until her four engines caught at 80 m.p.h. Mile markers whipped past like rungs in a picket fence as the pale blue, aluminum-bodied car made a pass up and down the range at an average speed of 330.513 m.p.h.-64 m.p.h. faster than the American record he set last year...
...even that was not fast enough for Thompson. Later this month he plans to take a crack at the world's land-speed record of 394.196 m.p.h. set in 1947 by Britain's John Cobb. The hot-rodders who turn respectfully on the salt flats to watch Thompson are confident that he will eventually hit 400 m.p.h. in Challenger I. And so is Mickey Thompson: "There's plenty more where that 330 came from...
Labor itself, by its incredibly crude tactics, seemed determined to achieve precisely the tough reform bill it was fighting. Among the House conferees was New Jersey Democrat Frank Thompson, regarded as a close friend to labor-although not to Jimmy Hoffa's racket-riddled International Brotherhood of Teamsters. In working for a middle-road labor bill, Thompson had won the enmity of Hoffa's top lobbyist, blundering, blunderbussing Sidney Zagri. Soon after Zagri denounced Thompson as an enemy to labor, Thompson began getting threatening telephone calls, finally reported them to the FBI. Driving to the Capitol one morning...
...back came last week, when North Carolina Democrat Howard Cooley offered an amendment to increase by $200 million the bartering provisions on farm-surplus shipments abroad. Northern Democrats joined Republicans in opposition and Cooley's amendment got slaughtered, 143 to 52. New Jersey's Frank Thompson expressed the feelings of most Northern Representatives when he told Cooley: "Harold, from now on I'm against anything that grows." On that basis, the House vote on the Landrum-Griffin bill may be remembered long for political results that have no apparent connection with labor reform...